Let’s revise the U. S. Constitution a smidge and elect Vladimir Putin President of the U. S.–that’s my take on the matter at the end of all the neo-McCarthyite, Russophobic, Clintonian partisan bullshit and brouhaha emanating from the injured Right wing of the Democratic Party. Sure Putin looks like Ernst Stavro Blofeld, but the fact is he’s a lot more sober and saner than either Hillary Clinton or La Donald. Very Obama-like, in fact–and that’s not exactly praise coming from me–and it would probably be the least of three evils to have him in the White House, if one has to confine one’s imagination to those options. Here’s Oliver Stone and Truthdig’s Robert Scheer rapping on Stone’s recently-released interviews with Putin–a tv series and also an audiobook which digs up information in even greater detail–courtesy of Truthdig and KPFK.

I’m not big on the work of Oliver Stone–though I did like Platoon a long time ago–but recently he’s been doing some decent documentary stuff. (The Untold History of the United States, Stone’s 2012 documentary series, is surprisingly and refreshingly free of conspiracy theorizing foolishness.)

No it isn’t a hopeful robot-thespian answering a casting-call for the lead droid role in the next Star Wars episode. Below–via NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day–is the anime-esque JEM Internal Ball Camera–or Int-Ball for short–courtesy of JAXA (the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), currently fluttering about aboard the ISS. Don’t leave Earth without one.

“If Donald Trump had stood before 19 countries, his white skin practically gleaming under lights and television cameras, and said that Africa’s problems weren’t due to anything else but having too many kids and a ‘civilization problem’ every liberal from Portland to Massachusetts would collectively shit themselves with rage. They would decry the inhumanity in Rightist thinking, its racism, and above all it’s desire to maintain a brutally hierarchical status-quo.”

But when recently-elected “centrist” French President Emmanuel Macron pulls the same vampire-rabbit out of his magical neoliberal ass, so-called liberals in the U. S. ooh and aah and clap clap clap. The French people “dodged a bullet” when they elected Macron instead of the more openly bigoted Right-wing candidate Marine Le Pen a short time ago–so declared the U. S. economist and reputedly liberal pundit Robert Reich. While I was quite happy to see Le Pen’s campaign go down in flames, I think it would be far more accurate and honest to say that the French dodged one bullet only by taking another.

In too many ways to count, now that a minority of Americans have successfully reaffirmed their delusional, blinded faith in the Almighty Businessman, but we’re especially fucked on healthcare. The Clintonian crypto-fascist Right wing of the Democratic Party–when not busy concocting nonsense about Russia to explain away how their own favorite flavor of fascist predictably lost to a barely house-trained orangutan in a suit–is desperately attempting to protect its own preferred set-up to insure for-profit, private health insurance providers–legislation known popularly as Obamacare or the ACA (the Affordable Care Act, shortened from the official “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act”)–from the depredations of Trumpcare, the “alternative” to Obamacare/Romneycare currently being hatched in the fetid bowels of Congressional Republicans. Yep. Fucked.

The focus of the Establishment Democratic Party narrative–save the ACA!–however has kept the only genuine solution to America’s healthcare woes–namely Medicare for All/single-payer–in the background at best. The American people need to move it to the foreground.

Married to the Sea, one of the outré online comic sites that I frequent, with it’s usual bleakly humorous take on life in general, has also been uncharacteristically–synchronistically?–topical of late.

"Poetry Fetter'd, Fetters the Human Race! Nations are Destroy'd, or Flourish, in proportion as Their Poetry Painting and Music, are Destroy'd or Flourish! The Primeval State of Man, was Wisdom, Art, and Science."--William Blake

"Society is like a stew. If you don't keep it stirred up you get a lot of scum on the top."--Edward Abbey

"I believe books will never disappear. It is impossible . . . . Of all mankind's diverse tools, undoubtedly the most astonishing are his books . . . . If books were to disappear, history would disappear. So would men."--Jorge Luis Borges

“Somebody who only reads newspapers and at best books of contemporary authors looks to me like an extremely near-sighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is completely dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since he never gets to see or hear anything else.”--Albert Einstein

"If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads."--Ralph Waldo Emerson

". . . surely the equation of bland nonpartisanship with objectivity--a silly notion fostered by the worst traditions of television news reporting--must be rejected. We may scrutinize a known critic more carefully, but ultimately we must judge his arguments, not his autobiography."
--Stephen Jay Gould

"Sit down and read. Educate yourself for the coming conflicts."--Mary Harris "Mother" Jones

"It was not intelligent to make an opposition between literature and science. It is no more legitimate than an opposition between literature and 'classics' or between
literature and history."--H. G. Wells

“It is a scientific truism that less data will always support more hypotheses.”--Robert L. Pitman

"He who is a slave against his will, will be able to become free. He who has become free by the favor of his master and has sold himself into slavery will no longer be able to be free."--The Gnostic Gospel of Philip

"He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice."--Albert Einstein